VIDEO:Pipilotti Rist On Making Video Art

When talking about using the camera in her works Pipilotti Rist says: “It’s a lousy copy of our incredible visual eye system.”. Pipilotti Rist elaborates: “My main medium video is still very rough compared to what we see in real life. And it’s flat. Even virtual reality makes us believe that it’s not flat, but it’s all organized information.” Still, she feels that the camera can function as a third eye for human beings.

Rist is interested in the connection between our bodies and the camera. “I don’t make any separation between our body and nature,” she says. To her human beings are like plants without any roots and the body functions as a camera: “All the technical tools I use to do my work are already incorporated in our given structure.”

But the camera can be used to give perspectives that humans cannot achieve with the size of our bodies. By placing a camera at the root of a flower you get a whole new perspective: “It helps to imagine what the life of an insect must be,” she says and continues: “Size is completely relative and I try to replicate that with the camera work.”

Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962 as Elisabeth Charlotte Rist) is a Swiss visual artist, who works with video, film, and moving images often displayed as projections. Among her most prevalent themes are gender, sexuality, and the human body. In 1997 her work was featured in the Venice Biennial, where she was awarded a Premio 2000 award for the video ‘Ever Is Over All’. Other awards include the Wolfgang Hahn Prize (1999), the Joan Miró Prize (2009), and the Cutting the Edge Award at the 27th Annual Miami International Film Festival (2010). Rist has held solo exhibitions at MoMA in New York, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and Museo Nacional Centro de Are Reina Sofia in Madrid among others. Her works are a part of prominent museums worldwide including MoMA in New York, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, and Tate Modern in London.

Pipilotti Rist was interviewed by Christian Lund at her studio in Switzerland in January 2019 as well as at the Louisiana Museum of Modern art in February 2019 in connection with the exhibition ‘Åbn min lysning’ (Open my Glade), curated by Tine Colstrup, Camera: Jakob Solbakken, Edited by: Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen, Produced by: Christian Lund, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2021, Supported by Den A. P. Møllerske Fond